bookheaven | Andújar: The Robot Gentleman of San Juan

Andújar: The Robot Gentleman of San Juan by Carolina Cardona

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I met the author at the steampunk symposium and listening to her made me want to dig right into this. You don't get a lot of Latinx steampunk. And just look at that amazing cover.

The story revolves around cousins Violeta Andújar and Santos. The latter, in this steampunk version of Puerto Rico, is at the very least a cyborg when you meet him, after tragedy took his family and left him with multiple amputations. He lives with his aged aunt Ofelia in their mansion. Violeta is the reclusive Santos's exact opposite.

She arrives on the island after years in a nun-run boarding school after a youthful indiscretion with a boy she thinks she loves, the revolutionary Joaquin who wants a PR free of Spanish rule. She's there for an extended stay while dealing with her impetus engagement to a very wealthy, suitable to her status, man who she snaked from his first fiancee. She is the social center of town and has yet to meet an alcohol or drug she doesn't like. She and one of her friends even try to make Santos more social even though Violeta doesn't think much of him.

But minds change and so do feelings. The tale is set around real events with PR stuck between wanting its own independence, Spain and America (and their war), with a rather alternative ending to how it really went.

Santos is a very interesting character. Half the time I wanted to dropkick Violeta into the ocean. She is selfish and self centered. The characters are what kept me reading. What bothered me about this book is the first third was often rather flowery in language and I think intended to evoke Violeta's opium haze. But it also left me wondering what exactly was going on.

Without spoilers, I did have some issues with the last third because it's entirely a different tone (and nearly a different genre) than the rest of the book. That is where you'll find the real battles that happened at sea (and the author gave me a few places to research on my own as I was interested) but there is a lot of weirdness also going on with Santos. That's about all I can say without spoilers.

View all my reviews